Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer science and, more specifically, to techniques for automatic and dynamic opacity settings for scatterplots.
Description of the Related Art
Scatterplots are an effective and commonly used technique to show the relationship between two-dimensional data within a dataset and to visualize the distribution of the data to quickly identify similarities and outliers within the dataset. In a scatterplot, data in the dataset may be graphically represented as data points on a two-dimensional chart. As the number of data points increases, however, the scatterplot may suffer from “over-plotting” as the ratio of data points to chart area increases and the data points show significant overlapping on the chart. When over-plotting occurs, data points can be occluded and information may be lost. This can make it difficult or impossible to see the individual data points and lead to misinterpretation of the data, or the inability to perceive the data's underlying distribution.
One solution to over-plotting is to manually reduce the opacity level of the data points until the data points and the underlying distribution are more discernible in the chart. However, setting the opacity level may be a time-consuming manual task that requires trial and error to find an opacity level that provides a visual improvement in the chart.
As the foregoing illustrates, there is a need for a more effective technique for generating and displaying scatterplots.